e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Category: Ed Tech

The “Ed Tech” category includes posts about educational technology products themselves, including LMSs and other learning platforms, adaptive learning and other digital curricular materials products, learning analytics, and educational apps of all types. It also includes technical aspects of ed tech products, especially interoperability.

  • Regulatory Barriers to Innovation for Ed Tech and Open Education

    Over the past few weeks there has been a significant backlash growing against SOPA (the anti-piracy bills introduced in Congress) – read here or here for background.  The biggest change since the bills were introduced is that big technology vendors (significantly including Microsoft and working through the Business Software Alliance) have either withdrawn support or gotten off the fence.  The BSA is now officially lobbying against SOPA as written.  In the world of strange bedfellows, there are also a number of politicians on both sides of the aisle publicly opposing the bill.  It does take some real legislative talent to help create a Pelosi – Paul – Issa common cause.

    Despite the growing opposition, there certainly appears to be a concerted effort in Congress to get the bill passed.  The outcome is far from clear at this point.

    While SOPA by itself remains a major threat to innovation for educational technology and open education in general, it may be helpful to step back and see the growing list of federal laws and regulations that could have a major impact on innovation in higher education.  While each issue is interesting in and of itself, a pattern is emerging.  This pattern suggests that organizations interested in preserving the status quo – are actively pushing back against the tide of change brought by online systems, online education, and digital content.

  • How Georgia Tech Has Shown the Perils of SOPA

    This has been a tough week for open education, at least in higher education.  First came the news that Georgia Tech has taken down a 14-year-old student wiki site that allowed discussions and collaboration across courses and across semesters.  Next came the news of more details on proposed intellectual property laws in Congress, dubbed SOPA for Stop Online Piracy Act, that are being drafted in a draconian manner to protect content providers while taking away reasonable “safe harbor” protections for internet site operators.  Despite the nominal differences in these two pieces of legislation, I think that the Georgia Tech FERPA decision has shown just how dangerous SOPA could be to higher education.

    Ramblin Wreck

    The system under consideration at Georgia Tech was “Swikis”, a site that students used for their coursework and broader educational usage.  As described in the Chronicle, all it took was for one student to cause the institution to shut down the whole Swikis program, despite the fact that students choose how to participate.  The reason for Georgia Tech’s decision was their interpretation over violating FERPA regulations.  No ambiguity here, just a simple interpretation by the institution despite the fact that FERPA was written into law in 1974, well before we had an internet and collaborative online software.

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  • Rhiz-o-Matic: Scaling the MOOC

    And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? And friends they may think it’s a movement.

    And that’s what it is , the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come’s around on the guitar.

    With feeling.

    -Arlo Guthrie

    My post on Jim Groom’s DS 106 MOOC generated a lot of discussion, both in the comments thread and on other blogs. However, I would like to see it also generate action, which is always one of my goals as an edublogger. At one point in the comments thread, I wrote,

    My main concern is that we keep our eye on the ball. What kinds of problems can the techniques behind ds106 (for example) solve for which people? Who can they help in what ways? Who do we not yet know how to help using the current techniques of open education? How can we stretch what we are learning from ds1-6 and other experiments to reach other people and solve other problems? In particular, while I hear a lot of talk from open education proponents about democratization, most of the experiments around MOOCs and the like seem to take as students mostly…well…people who are blogging about how great MOOCs could be. There’s nothing wrong with that if the purpose is to learn how to do better MOOCs, or if the goal is just personal fulfillment, but it’s not clear to me how these translate into broad educational success that is “rhizomatic” for people who haven’t already gone to (conventional, industrialized) graduate school to learn what “rhizomatic” means. Yes, there are some great success stories from Jim’s class, and I’m sure, from other MOOCs, about people who didn’t come in as ed tech gurus and were lifted up by the course, inspired to better their lives. But you can tell the same kind of stories of people who come through conventional classrooms. What I want to see is that those successes aren’t accidental to the model. I want to see that the MOOC can be tuned to reach people who haven’t graduated college or even gone to college. When I say I want to see that, I’m not expressing skepticism. What I mean is that I want to see it.

    Today, I am going to make my contribution to that goal by proposing a campaign to scale out MOOC adoption in order to reach many more and different people.

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  • A “Bold Idea” Essential for Student Privacy

    In Tracy Mitrano’s October 31, 2001 blog “FERPA, GLBA and HIPAA In Vendor Contract,” there was “a bold proposal.” She posited that most important action that can be taken to protect student privacy is a contractual requirement that contractors follow the same privacy requirements—including FERPA (Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act)—as colleges and universities themselves follow. Mitrano, is a lawyer in Cornell University’s Office of VP for Information Technology. She has written about intellectual property issues in universities.

    Mitrano warns this will not be easy: “Contract lawyers associated with Internet companies have heard of these laws, but are not knowledgeable about them.”

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  • Instructure and Security Testing

    Instructure has had a very interesting reaction to the news and blogs about security vulnerabilities with Blackboard’s Learn LMS several months ago.  They have decided to engage Securus Global, the same firm that did the ethical hacking for the Australian universities in the Blackboard investigation, to test Instructure’s Canvas LMS product.  They have also invited me to be essentially an embedded reporter – participating in the process and independently reporting on the testing and Instructure’s response to any vulnerabilities identified.

    While doing research for a my post analyzing Blackboard’s response to the reports of security vulnerabilities, I had the opportunity to interview several LMS vendors to get background on their philosophies and practices around security.  I think it is important to understand how the broader LMS market is handling security concerns, especially as the LMS has become such a central part of the an institutions’ academic operations.

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  • What If OpenClass Succeeds in Disrupting LMS Market?

    Right now the e-Literate site is close to over-heating from Michael’s voluminous posts – all very thoughtful, but we’re going to need some WordPress coolant.

    During discussions over the past week in person and over blogs, I’ve had three people ask essentially the same question – will Pearson’s OpenClass LMS offering and associated corporate strategy lead to more competition or less competition in the LMS space for higher ed, or how will the competitive landscape change?  Obviously the nature of this question is speculative with no concrete answers, but I do think that technology market trends can help us with an educated guess.

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  • The Sakai/Jasig Merger Plans

    After years of stasis and even atrophy, the educational technology markets are suddenly hot. New LMS players like Instructure are making major wins and market share is shifting rapidly across all the major players. Educational technology startups are sprouting up and getting funded at an unprecedented rate. Blackboard’s announcement of support for producing, discovering, and sharing OERs is the latest of a number of signals that the company is changing. Meanwhile, none of its major competitors are standing still either. Pearson’s OpenClass represents a bold and provocative vision that could upend the whole chess board. Then there are the nextbooks, forging a whole new product category. There was even a “startup alley” at EDUCAUSE for the first time. While rapid change brings about its own problems that we have to be wary of, all of this foment is, on balance, good. We are at an inflection point. The ecosystem is producing new ideas and new possibilities. I am a big believer in the forces of entrepreneurialism and consumerism as twin engines of progress.

    It is with all of this as a backdrop that I would like to explain why I think the recent re-affirmation of the Sakai/Jasig merger is more important than ever and why I have agreed to continue serving on the foundation board of the new entity when the merger is finalized.

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